Church Monuments Society

The output of the celebrated Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 – 1680) was almost entirely dominated by work for the Popes – especially Urban VIII – some senior clergy and others associated with the church in Rome. He also produced marble portrait busts of Louis XIV, Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Medina and others as well as the now lost bust of Charles I and that for the obscure Suffolk squire Thomas Baker[1]. The bust of Charles, technically a gift from Urban VIII to Queen Henrietta Maria, was presented to the King and Queen at Oatlands on 17 July 1637, possibly by Baker, but it was sold at the end of the Civil War. In order to produce the bust of Charles I, Bernini, who never visited England, was sent Van Dyke’s famous triple portrait of the king, began in late 1635 and from which he was to produce the portrait bust.[2] This was recovered for the Royal Collection at the Restoration but was destroyed in the fire of Whitehall Palace in January 1698.

In the years immediately prior to the Civil War, Bernini’s work had gained many admirers at the Caroline court and some, like Lord Arundel, considered the possibility of importing an entire monument. These schemes came to nothing due in large part to the outbreak of Civil War in 1642. The high costs involved along with the potential associations with ‘Catholic’ art would also have been a factor.

A number of exiled Royalists, as well as two sons of Nicholas Stone, visited Rome in the 1640s. Among them was Charles Cheyne, later 1^st Viscount Newhaven. It was during his one and only visit to Rome that he almost certainly encountered the Bernini workshop. On his return to England Charles married, in 1654, Lady Jane Cavendish, heiress and daughter of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. In 1657 he purchased the manor of Chelsea with her dowry.[3] Lady Jane died after a series of epileptic fits, on 8 October 1669 at the age of 48. In 1670 Charles Cheyne commissioned a monument in her memory from the workshops of Bernini, a comment by Bowack in 1705 recording that it is by the famous Seignior Birnini, an Italian, and to cost 500L.[4]

Cheyne entrusted the negotiations for the monument to his cousin, Edward Chaloner. However, Chaloner left Rome for Venice in 1671 and the negotiations were handed over to Edward Altham, a merchant resident in Rome. Of particular interest is that the monument, its design and manufacture are the subjects of a large amount of surviving correspondence between Cheyne and Chaloner and, later, Altman. In October 1670 Chaloner contacted Cheyne giving some details of the possible design ideas and their costs but unfortunately no designers are identified. These ideas came to nothing, possibly due to costs or because they were too ambitious or too ‘Catholic’.  Another letter of early 1671 between Chaloner and Cheyne says that a wooden model had been prepared.[5]

After Chaloner’s departure for Venice it appears that Altman was left more or less to his own devices to find the appropriate craftsmen. Further correspondence suggests that either the designer or the ‘architect’ is a kinsman to the famous Cavaliere Bernini and his heir besides.  The correspondence further suggests that the final design was the work of Paolo Bernini (1648-1728), the less talented son of Gian Lorenzo and that the sculptor was almost certainly Antoni Raggi (1624-1686). Raggi was known to be the most talented of Gian Lorenzo’s students and he produced several pieces independently of the studio.

In March 1671 Altman asked Cheyne to send him the ‘lineaments’ of the face and it is highly likely that a portrait of Lady Jane, or a drawing, was sent to Altman. An oval portrait of Jane, possibly by Cornelius Johnson in the collection at Welbeck Abbey displays a remarkably similar image to that of the head on the monument as does an earlier portrait of Jane, also at Welbeck (see below)[6]. The completed monument was shipped from Leghorn (Livorno) in thirty cases on 19 October 1671. However, on receiving the monument the effigy of Jane was found to be facing the wrong way but Altman persuaded Charles to accept it. This he did. At this stage in the work there was no inscription on the monument and Cheyne consulted the then rector, Dr Adam Littlejohn and it was he who composed the inscription we see today. On the sarcophagus, between the console brackets, is the later painted inscription to Charles Cheyne who died in 1698.

The monument is in its original position on the north wall of the nave. Lady Jane reclines on her left side on top of a black marble sarcophagus. Her left arm supports her upper body and the book that accompanies her is page-marked by her index finger. Her right hand is brought to her chest. Her gown, an off-the-shoulder garment, is very finely rendered and in the folds at her feet in a coronet indicating her aristocratic status.

The concave architectural frame is placed forward of the effigy, thus creating a niche, which makes a carefully constructed arrangement of accessibility. Lady Jane can be seen – but not approached – and the pose suggests surprise at being interrupted from her reading. The raised right arm thus suggests a display of mild irritation or alarm.  The inscription on the back wall, which is rather poorly laid out, must have been painted prior to the final positioning of the effigy. The inscription on the sarcophagus commemorates Charles Cheyne and was added later. At her funeral, Dr Littleton delivered a long sermon entitled Favour is deceitful and Beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord She shall be Praised, (Proverbs XXX1 30). This sermon was specifically written to acknowledge Jane’s piety and generosity in the rebuilding of the church

Lady Jane must have quite a formidable woman. Her father was a staunch Royalist and, following the defeat at Marston Moor, fled to France leaving Jane and her sisters to look after their house at Welbeck. The portrait of Jane records the fact that she kept garrison for her father at Welbeck against ye Parliament army. Jane was later captured by Parliament on 2 August 1644 and rather roughly treated. She supported her father in exile by sending him money and also managed to save some of the paintings – mostly by van Dyke –  and tapestries at Welbeck.

In ordering a Baroque monument from Rome, a very bold decision, Charles Cheyne has not only proclaimed his cultural tastes and appreciation of Italian art but made the ultimate expression of conspicuous consumption. Several metropolitan sculptors operating at that time could have produced an equally impressive monument but at a much lower cost. By the 1670s the luxury consumer trade was little concerned with Roman art and its potentially catholic connotations but there remains here an ethical dilemma. How do you depict an overtly pious woman in the context of a Christian Baroque vocabulary? Some level of control must have been exercised in the design as the completed monument is quite restrained if compared with other female figures from the Bernini workshop. Displays of heraldry in order to illustrate familial descent and wider family associations had been considerably toned down by this period but this monument has no heraldry whatsoever, an unusual situation. Giver Lady Jane’s high aristocratic birth – she was the daughter of the Duke of Newcastle – and Charles’s relationship with her family, this omission is difficult to explain.

Dr CJ Easter FSA

Select Bibliography

A Bacchi, C Hess and J Montagu (eds) Bernini and the birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture. J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2008

E Bathurst Truth Vindicated 1695

E Bronfen Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic Manchester University Press1992

C Easter   The Monument to Lady Jane Cheyne and its Possible Influence on Three Monuments by John Bushnell.  International Journal of Art and Art History June 2024, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 9-22

T Faulkner An Historical and Topographical Description of Chelsea and its Environs (1810) 89-90

Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California, USA

J Irwin Anna Maria van Schurman and Antoinette Bourignon: Contrasting Examples of Seventeenth-Century Pietism Church History, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 301-315

N H Keeble The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth Century Woman Routledge (1999)

S Mendelson and P Crawford Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 Clarendon Press 1997

L Peck Consuming Splendor Cambridge 2005

[1] See J Paul Getty Museum, Bernini and the Birth of Baroque portrait sculpture. Exhibition Catologue Los Angeles 2008 (241-242). The Baker bust (1637-38) is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum and, apart from the bust of Charles I, was the only piece executed for an English patron.

[2] This portrait is now located in the King’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh.

[3] Lady Jane was an accomplished poet and playwright and along, with her sister Elizabeth, produced the earliest surviving stage comedy written by women.

[4] John Bowack The Antiquities of Middlesex part 1 Chelsea and Kensington (1705) p 6.

[5] See Randall Davies Chelsea Old Church (1904) pp57-74. for details of the surviving correspondence regarding the monument. The original correspondence, formerly in the possession of Lord Ellesmere, is now held by the Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California USA

[6] The miniature portrait of Lady Jane shows her in a white dress with blue scarf and wearing a jewel and pearl necklace. Welbeck inventory no. 001402

Gallery

• Lady Jane Cavendish, possibly by Adriaen Hanneman (1601-1671) after Sir Anthony van Dyke, Welbeck Abbey Nottinghamshire.
• Lady Jane Cheyne d1669 (erected 1672) Chelsea Old Church by Paolo Bernini and Antonio Raggi
• Detail of Lady Jane Cheyne's effigy